Category Archives: Gold

As the stock market’s decline intensifies, one wonders what central bankers will do. Will they coordinate to take down the US dollar? Their objective would be to boost their balance sheets and pump out enough liquidity to prop up ailing share prices.

Will Treasury Secretary Munchkin Mnuchin again call the PTT (Plunge Protection Team)? Stocks are sliding hard. It will likely take a sizeable sovereign effort to turn the state of the market.

As we welcome August, we could be on the verge of an august rebound in gold. My contrarian senses were tingling when Vanguard recently renamed its Precious Metals and Mining Fund to the Vanguard Global Capital Cycles Fund. This exemplifies gold as an out of favor investment and is a sign the conditions may be right for forming a significant bottom.

“If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you’ll never get it done.” — Bruce Lee

This week, with more earnings and big mergers on parade, there is plenty for traders to digest. Add to that, the myriad of technical tools available at your mouse-clicking fingertips and you can see how traders can easily be bogged down and confused by conflicting indicators and information overload.

As a technical analyst, aka a “chartist,” you have the ability to overlay a veritable smorgasbord of studies on your chart. That can quickly clutter the picture and cause indecision.

So Sarnoff, what is your solution?

The answer is to study the technical indicators, pick a handful you like best, and use them.

I want my chart to paint a vivid picture, depicting the human behavior (buying and selling) that drives the direction of market price movement. I prefer to look at a clean and clear chart, one that readily reveals which side (buyers or sellers) has the advantage. I can then go about determining when and where the balance of power is likely to shift. Continue reading →